Pages

Friday, October 19, 2012

Possessing Freedom Blog Tour: Editor Interview

Today I'm talking with the Australian Literary Review editor, and contributor to Possessing Freedom, STEVE ROSSITER.

As part of the Possessing Freedom launch, Steve is holding a Fan Fiction Competition where you could win$2,000! To enter you need to have read the book, so we're giving away three copies over three interviews. There's this interview, an interview with Rhiannon Hart on Down Under Wonderings and an interview with Belinda Dorio here on October 27.

Sharon: How did the collection of stories come about?Possessing Freedom came about from the concept of getting a small team
of writers to collaborate on an integrated collection of short stories. By an
integrated collection I mean stories which share the same characters and story
world.

I
wanted to provide a vehicle for some short story writers to build their skills,
meet other writers and have something to help them move towards their more
ambitious fiction writing goals.

As rewarding as the experience has been for Rhiannon Hart and me, who each have
two stories in Possessing Freedom, this is more of a showcase for the
writing of up-and-coming authors Belinda Dorio and Beau Hillier, who each have
four stories in the book.

What was it like weaving a story with four different authors, and what was
the process used for consistency?

The approach we went for was to make each of the twelve chapters
a short story in its own right, so readers can treat the book as a novel length
collection of twelve short stories that each make sense separately from one
another rather than put all our eggs in one basket with a collaborative novel
which depends on flawless integration, stylistic consistency and narrative flow
between multiple authors – which would be very time intensive to pull off well.

While there are twelve
stories, they are also divided into three novella-length groups of four
stories, and these three novella-length stories, each with two narrators
alternating between the four stories, could be considered to make up a single
novel-length story with six narrator characters.

We had regular meetings to
hammer out the large scale details as well as negotiate and clarify details
which cross over between stories.

Much of the close
collaborative work was on developing these four-story novella-length sections
and ultimately it was up to me, with input from the others, to keep the big
picture in mind and tweek things for consistency across the twelve stories.

So what attracted the team to a ghost story?

Young adult
fantasy/speculative fiction was the most obvious shared interest between the
authors, so that became the starting point. It was unanimous that we wanted to
do something different than vampires, angels or werewolves, as a lot of writers
were jumping on those bandwagons.

I think it was Belinda Dorio
who suggested ghosts in a near future Melbourne setting and we ran with it.

What were some of the steps the team took to ensure consistency in
characters?

Firstly, having come to the
decision that each author would narrate two stories per character and be in
charge of developing one or two characters, each author pitched their
characters to the group and we had group discussions to further develop the
characters.

Secondly, each author wrote a
draft story and we discussed how the characters were developing and fitting
into the overall character dynamics and plot.

Thirdly, we kept in touch
while writing about other authors’ characters in the stories we narrated,
asking them how their character might react or if anything in our portrayal of
their character jumped out as not in keeping with that character.

Who was your favourite character to write and why?

I narrated both my stories
with Damian, an intern in a hospital psych ward, but also wrote with Alice, the
narrator character of two of the other stories who is a psych ward patient. I
also had a doctor character Damian was working with and Alice was being treated
by, called Dr Bryant, who crossed over into the stories narrated by Alice.

Damian was my favourite
character to write, largely because I was writing from his point of view. I was
writing two short stories about him trying to get to the bottom of what was
going on with Alice within the limitations of his role at the hospital.
However, in the larger context of the story, Alice is the more important
character and I enjoyed working with her character in group discussions and
editing, and Damian’s relation to Alice was a large part of writing his
character.

If you were a paranormal being, what would you want to be?

Hmm… There are advantages and disadvantages to consider. The history of
storytelling is littered with examples of humans wanting to be supernatural
beings and vice versa; such as tales of immortal beings giving up their
immortality to live out a life with the mortal they love (as in the film City
of Angels – or the German film Wings
of Desire (aka Der Himmel Uber Berlin) on which it was
based), humans trying to find a way around death (as in The Sixth Day or
Frankenstein), humans trying to attain invisibility (as in The
Invisible Man or Hollow Man), but there are often unforeseen
problems.

Immortality would have strong
advantages for developing and retaining knowledge and skills to help me make
important advances in knowledge which may not otherwise be made. But this could
have major complications if other people were also immortal because they might
keep bad ideas around and be able to direct resources towards those ideas.

During this process did you ever break out into the Ghostbusters song?

No – but if anyone out there hasn’t seen Ghostbusters 2, check it out.

I believe Maria V Snyder workshopped the opening story, what was that like?

Maria V Snyder was kind enough to meet with Beau Hillier, Belinda Dorio and me
during her tour of Australia and New Zealand last year. She workshopped the
first chapter (by Belinda) and offered some useful advice which Belinda
incorporated into her rewrite.

Belinda had recommended
Maria’s novels to me early in our writing process. I read Inside Out and
liked it, so I looked Maria up online, discovered she would be coming to
Australia on tour not long after that, so I emailed her about the project and
she said she’d love to meet us in Melbourne.

I also
saw Maria on some panel discussions at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival during
her book tour and was impressed by her genuineness and her practical approach
to discussing fiction.

What is the biggest learnings you've taken away from the process?

I
guess that would be confirmation of the importance of having both a good concept
and good execution. A poor concept can’t be made good by fancy language but a
good concept can be brought down by poor execution, so a good concept and good
execution is vital to a good story – and it’s great when you can work with
writers who get both working together pretty well in the first draft.

Also,
authors have different approaches to writing and bring a lot of things to their
writing which they don’t deliberately think about and analyse, so each author
will differ in what they consciously identify as the way they write and this
will never be a full description of everything that goes into their writing.

Rapid fire questions:Latte or cappuccino? Cappucino – but I’m not too fussed either way.Note pad and pen or computer? A mix of both.Magic or fists? Fists. I usually tend to prefer realism over fantasy,
which can include realistic aspects to fantasy fiction, such as realistic
character motivations and behaviour in a fantasy context.Blue or green? EitherSixth Sense or Ghostbusters?Sixth Sense

Sharon M. Johnston is an author and public relations specialist who lives in sunny Queensland, Australia.
She has been a Pitch Madness host for the past few years, and is also a Pitch Wars mentor.
Her New Adult Sci Fi Romance, DIVIDED: An Open Heart Novel Book 1, is out now with City Owl Press.

YAtopia Team

We are ten writers passionate about Young Adult literature in all shapes and sizes. Check out our About Us page for details on all of our amazing contributors! Don't hesitate to contact us with questions or comments.